Deborah Ball

Italy bureau chief, The Wall Street Journal.

Deborah Ball is Rome-based bureau chief for Italy at the Wall Street Journal. A native of Boston, she has been with the paper for more than 15 years, covering a wide variety of business, finance and political topics in Milan, London and Zurich.

Between 1999 and 2002, she also covered the European luxury goods sector for the Journal, and is the author of “House of Versace,” published by Random House in 2010. “House of Versace,” which was made into a Lifetime movie in 2013, tells the story Gianni Versace and the house he founded, including his murder and the struggle of his sister Donatella to keep the maison afloat after her brother’s death.

Articles by Deborah Ball

Italy’s highest appeals court overturned the murder convictions of Seattle native Amanda Knox and her Italian former boyfriend in the 2007 death of British student Meredith Kercher, definitively clearing the pair.

Pope Francis wrapped up a week-long tour of Asia with a rousing Mass in Manila, attended by millions, on a day in which he addressed the issues of climate change and population control—two sensitive topics in a country with high birthrates and one that is vulnerable to natural disaster.

In his first full day of a five-day visit to the Philippines, Pope Francis met with poor families and street children, warned the government against corruption and threw his weight behind the Filipino church’s opposition to a birth control law.

Pope Francis waded into the debate over freedom of expression following the attacks in Paris, saying that killing in the name of religion is an “aberration,” but adding that those who deride other faiths can expect to provoke a strong—even violent—response.

Pope Francis has been a strong advocate in interreligious dialogue, even in the face of violence among faiths. But a gift he gave to the bishops of Sri Lanka during his visit to Colombo could appear a provocative one in a country where ethnic and religious tensions still bubble.

At a crowded beachfront Mass, Pope Francis canonized Sri Lanka’s first martyr and renewed a demand for freedom of worship, particularly for religious minorities suffering persecution, a call that will resonate in this multiethnic country and beyond.

The pope’s visit Wednesday to Madhu in northern Sri Lanka highlighted a region that has seen much ethnic and religious strife, having served as a refuge for Christians fleeing persecution centuries ago and a shelter for civilians during Sri Lanka’s long and bloody civil war.

At the start of his second visit to Asia as pontiff, Pope Francis called for reconciliation in Sri Lanka, which is still healing from a 26-year civil war and emerging from a hard-fought presidential election.

Credit Suisse Group confirmed that its offices in Milan were raided last month by Italian police, a new wrinkle in the Swiss bank’s dealings with foreign authorities cracking down on offshore tax evasion.

Pope Francis launched his harshest criticism to date of the Vatican’s Roman bureaucracy, likening it to an “ailing body” that has often failed to provide a positive model for the Catholic Church at large.